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Monday at CinemaCon, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation presented footage from their upcoming 2012 slate to a room full of theater exhibitors (and a few press). After the jump you will find a video blog I recorded with Frosty from Collider reacting to 25 minutes of Madagascar 3, 15 minutes of Rise of the Guardians, three scenes from Christopher McQuarrie‘s One Shot starring Tom Cruise and a sequence from Sacha Baron Cohen‘s The Dictator. You may be surprised at what we liked and we we didn’t care for. We previously covered the GI Joe: Retaliation sizzle reel in a previous video blog elsewhere on the site, so we won’t repeat our reactions here.

While the Madagascar franchise has never drawn Pixar levels of respect (what does, really?), for kid-oriented entertainment you could do a lot worse that these films. The series has generally been cute, mildly amusing, and totally inoffensive — which may not sound like glowing praise, but that’s a lot more than I can say for Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked — and the newest entry, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted seems to be along the same lines.

Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith are on board once again as a quartet of Central Park Zoo animals just trying to get back to New York. Unfortunately, they wind up in Europe instead, where they’re chased by a ruthless animal control squad led by Capitaine Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand). In an effort to escape their clutches, they take up with a circus traveling across the continent, meeting new friends like Vitaly the tiger (Bryan Cranston), Gia the jaguar (Jessica Chastain), and Stefano the sea lion (Martin Short) along the way. Watch the first full trailer after the jump.

It may be a while before we see the triumphant return of Bob and Helen Parr and their superpowered brood, but if Joss Whedon is to be believed, a rematch between Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer may not be so far off. After the jump:

Technically, I guess the PG-13 Grown Ups doesn’t really qualify as a kids’ film, so its sequel probably won’t either. But since that movie centered around five grown men acting like children, I’ll say that that this Sequel Bits is all about the young’uns. After the jump:

A movie starring Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer, Frances McDormand and Sacha Baron Cohen could get even the most casual movie fan excited. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted is exactly that, and yet I’d be lying if I said I was anticipating this one. The series follows a group of Central Park Zoo animals who were shipped back to their native continent and get into crazy adventures trying to find their way back to New York. In this installment, they’re traversing Europe as incognito members of the circus. Directors Eric Darnell and Conrad Vernon present the third theatrical film in the animated franchise, in 3D, on June 8. Check out the trailer below. Read More »

Disney and Pixar have always been the undisputed champions of animation but a new contender has been rising in the ranks over the last several years: DreamWorks. The studio that brought us the Shrek films, Antz, Chicken Run, Madagascar, Bee Movie and many others has been fighting the good fight for the better part of a decade and while they have yet to over take Disney and Pixar, their upcoming slate sounds like they’re once again swinging for the fences. On Tuesday, DreamWorks Animation announced their upcoming slate all the way from this summer’s Kung Fu Panda 2 through 2014 when they’ll release How To Train Your Dragon 2 on June 20. In between, they’re preparing original films featuring the likes of Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Isla Fisher, Jude Law, Nicolas Cage, Ryan Reynolds, Emma Stone and many others. The films are as follows:

There’s a lot of small casting news today. Let’s kick off with word that Spongebob Sqaurepants himself, Tom Kenny, will once again lend his voice to a robot in the third Transformers film, Dark of the Moon. He voiced Skids (one of the generally reviled ‘racist’ bots) and Wheelie in the last film, but we don’t know what character(s) he’ll be voicing this time. [Popeater]

After the break, Frances McDormand voices a rare villain role, and the Sam Raimi-produced Dibbuk Box gets a lead. Read More »